Toggle Full Screen Mode with a Keyboard Shortcut in Mac OS X

Want to get the most out of Mac OS X native Full Screen app mode? Assign a keyboard shortcut to toggle Full Screen mode with a simple keystroke. This will work to flip in and out of full screen mode of OS X in any app that supports the feature, and it only takes a minute or so to setup.

Modern versions of OS X already have this, but prior versions of OS X can choose whichever keyboard shortcut you’d like to perform the function, just be sure to pick one that doesn’t conflict with anything else.

In OS X Yosemite, Toggling Full Screen Mode with Command+Control+F

In OS X 10.10.x onward, there’s a built-in native keyboard shortcut to enter and exit out of full screen: Command+Control+F

That shortcut is easy enough for users of OS X Yosemite, but prior versions of OS X will still need to set a shortcut for this action manually, which we’ll cover next.

Select the “Keyboard Shortcuts” tab and choose ‘Application Shortcuts’ from the list on the left

Click on the + icon to add a new keyboard shortcut for all applications and type the following exactly:

Enter Full Screen

Now you need to assign it a keyboard shortcut, I chose Command+Escape because it serves no purpose in OS X, but it’s the old keyboard shortcut for entering into Front Row

Click “Add” and then click on the + icon again, this time typing:

Exit Full Screen

Choose the same keyboard shortcut as you chose before, in this case Command+Escape, and click onto “Add” again

Close out System Preferences

Now pick an app that supports full screen mode natively, like Safari or Preview, and hit Command+Escape to enter or exit from the apps full screen mode, toggling it with ease. Why didn’t Apple set a key command for this in the first place? I don’t know.

This works in all apps that support it natively, and the ones that don’t yet support it should work through utilities like Maximizer too which aim to bring the feature to the few apps that still don’t support it themselves.

A quick note: some apps through Maximizer don’t work that well, Chrome can still get stuck, and you may run into issues if you added Front Row to Lion yourself, but you can always choose another keyboard shortcut if Front Row starts launching instead. Be sure to update your apps often so you can gain native support for Lion features like this, and you won’t run into as many issues.

Thanks to Andy for sending us this tip from Red Sweater, they chose Command+Control+Return as their full screen shortcut, but I like Command+Escape.

Update: Some users report issues with Command+Escape so you may want to try Command+Control+F or another keyboard shortcut (that shortcut wound up being the default in modern versions of OS X, neat!).

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45 Comments

All native apps, Safari, Photo Booth, FaceTime, Mail, iTunes, etc, use CONTROL+COMMAND+F to enter and exit from full-screen. That would be my recommendation for setting a universal shortcut, to stay within Apple’s UX convention.

It seems to me that this only works on monitor #1… in order to go full screen from my second monitor I still have to click the expansion button in the top. Then, it slides over to monitor #1 as it expands, which looks cool, but isn’t exactly what I’m going for.

[…] while using a computer, and sometimes even the best of us need a bit of help to focus. Lion’s full screen mode can be helpful, but when that’s not enough or when you need access to other windows and apps, […]

A good one to use with newer apple keyboards is F5 or F6 as these have no assigned function unlike the other function keys ex. F3= Mission Control. IMO apple should have included the fullscreen function here stock

I like to use Command+X because I always want everything in full screen, and to me it seems like the easiest shortcut known because the keys are right above one another. I am surprised Apple did not set this as the X button shortcut.

[…] If all you need to do is work in a single app, make use of the newer Full Screen feature of OS X. Send whatever app deserves your unrestrained focus into Full Screen mode by clicking the arrow icons in the corner of the app window or by assigning the feature it’s very own keyboard shortcut. […]